On Saturday I happened upon the Manhattan Beach Little League opening day parade, which put me in the mood for books about America's Pastime, baseball! Grades DK, K, 1st, 3rd, and 4th will all be hearing picture books or short stories about baseball and its relationship to American culture and history. DK students will also be hearing books on inventions, to support their study of levers, pulleys, and other simple machines. Grade 2 will be hearing a picture book biography about Mary Anning, lifelong fossil hunter, who discovered the ichthyosaur at the age of twelve. Grade 5 will hear Independent Dames, which highlights the contributions of women at the time of the American Revolution. March is Women's History Month, so all month I will be choosing books that show the contributions of women to politics, science, sports, and art.

The book club will not be meeting this week but will meet on March 16. Our selection is Igraine the Brave, by Cornelia Funke. Members in attendance will be voting on the three books we have read, which are the nominees in the Intermediate category for the California Young Reader Medal.

On February 26, I had the pleasure of attending the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association Children's Books and Literacy Dinner. Many authors were in attendance. Speakers included Judy Blundell (Jude Watson), Brandon Mull, Andrew Smith, and Dr. Cuthbert Soup, and emcee Cecil Castellucci.

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Barbara Siegemund-Broka, library media specialist, maintains this blog to inform Pennekamp students and families about library news and related content. Any opinions expressed here are solely her own.

What's Ms. Barbara reading?

Last Day on Mars, by Kevin Emerson​

﻿Worth repeating:﻿

​Part of what makes paper a brilliant technology may be, in fact, that it offers us so much and no more. A small child cannot tap the duck and elicit a quack; for that, the child needs to turn to a parent. And when you cannot tap the picture of the horse and watch it gallop across the page, you learn that your brain can make the horse move as fast as you want it to, just as later on it will show you the young wizards on their broomsticks, and perhaps even sneak you in among them.

--from "The Merits of Reading Real Books to Your Children," by Perri Klass, in New York Times, August 8, 2016​